We are saturated with information, and we know that
much of it is a distraction from language and meaning-making. But for Izzy
Oneiric, information is saturated with poetry. In From
the Bombshell Shelter, the imagination thrives on, rather than struggles
with, the physical and emotional effects of media overstimulation. Oneiric
makes music from language often appropriated from the primal gunk of our
information deluge-an effect that can happen only if her commitment to
each poem is equally as musical. These poems are as politically relevant
as they are formally innovative. They are deeply empathetic as they chart
the effects of a displaced, sometimes fragmented, lyrical self.
Tony Trigilio,
author of With the Memory, Which is Enormous
Club Soda on the Stains
My kitten was bleeding
And it was my fault.
I was late for shooting
Porn at Kmart for
Martha Stewart's Downhome
Hardcore collection and Paisley
Was biting my shoelaces.
I shooed her away
With my palm but connected
A little too hard.
She hit the glass-top coffee table.
Both cracked and
I stood there,
One shoe untied
Watching her bleed.
She tried mewing but
It came out gurgled.
And I knew I fucked up,
Knew I couldn't do anything
About bleeding or time.
I couldn't watch her suffer
So I left.
Martha was waiting.
"You're late."
"You don't understand!
I busted my kitten's head open!"
"Of course I understand.
A little club soda will clean up the blood."
She looked me over.
I was naked.
"Put some baking soda on
That shaving rash. All my
Talent must be flawless."
"But I'm not-"
"Quiet! Lights! Fluffer! Little
Ho on the Prairie take one!"
She ordered, directed, found
Fault with everything.
"If you want something done
Right the first time, you just
Have to do it yourself," she sighed,
Securing me to a wagon-wheel
Headboard with simple yet
Attractive fan knots.
I was systematically worked over
By strings of prospectors and
Pioneers brandishing spurs,
Whips, and lassos at competitive
Prices. A pickaxe-shaped
Vibrator perspired. Martha froze
The batteries so they'd last longer.
When she yelled "Cut!" the overhead
Fluorescents came back on. I was
Raw and she was smiling softly.
"Just because something is cheap,
Doesn't mean it can't be pretty.
You are Kmart."
She tossed me a small wad of small bills.
"Now go home to your split
Pussy, and don't forget,
Club soda on the stains."
When I Lost
my job at the piercing shop and found a job at the peep show, every
time the window lifted I hoped he'd be on the other side. Sometimes I'd
close my eyes and dance for him, but it was never him. The shop manager's
girlfriend danced there too. He'd come to see her and I'd goof on him,
make pig noses on my side of the glass. I showed her how to flip the switch
that kept the window open so he could watch her for free when the madams
were gone. Tempest showed me when Cinnamon and Sugar (no lie) started playing
daddy games in a corner booth off the clock. Cinnamon kept her bowler and
tie on the whole time; Sugar was so into it she got a doorknob-shaped bruise
on her spine. This is how knowledge is transmitted. But I digress.
Much later he told me he thought about it, walked by the peep show,
even went inside once and asked if my fake name was working, was wrecked
but couldn't bring himself to put a dollar in the slot. In that raw confessing
moment he was the soft-lipped beauty that flipped my ON switch for the
first time, and I almost countered that he was a reason I knew it was time
to leave town. But then he said one of me was equal to one and a half of
her and went back to looking like a sleepless year and I thought, "You
selfish coward she doesn't deserve you." But I said, "Goddamit
I'm late for my haircut," and left him to go find a barber. I felt
his eyes on me as I walked away. I didn't feel anything else.
For Bernadine Dohrn and Future Meteorologists
I smashed a window.
I shot a cop.
Connecting red to blue, the impact was impressively white.
I stripped naked and covered myself in red paint.
The color ran, but I stood still.
My brothers were swept up in waves of dissent.
My forehead blistered and peeled for a week.
I don't have lovers.
I don't have friends. I have
Hands and minds and ideals and stay
Awake until sunrise, stay up for days.
My brothers say I sound
Like it's always that time of the month.
They shoot first ask later.
I just shoot, having asked
And answered, heard the
Gavels banging in my sleep.
Knowing history and
The census won't count me,
My opinions don't skewer surveys because
I don't answer the phone during dinner.
Dinner is coffee in basements,
Hasty bagels on trains.
Breakfast is not the most
Important meal of the day.
Breakfast is an interruption.
Blinking away the cherry burns from cigarettes
Extinguished on my hand, I ripped
Thin pillows apart, kicked
Holes in arguments.
They kicked back.
I refused to back down.
Refused to cry.
I smuggled a piglet into the mayor's office, squealing its hunger and
fright.
Regardless of genus or species, infant hunger is infant hunger. Infant
hunger is
infinite hunger and though its form is appalling, it can't be ignored.
A pig stepped on
the piglet as they wrestled us apart and led me away in disgust.
No piglet deserves to be orphaned.
The tear gas burned. I couldn't wash it away.
They brought me to the station in
An antique trolley car, hands cold and
Wrists cut from plastic restraints, bound
Like a loaf of bread or a length of fence.
They ran out of cells to hold everyone.
I ran out of patience for outdated
Folk songs so I started composing
My own-cadenced words
That will never be heard in a radio world of
Uptown girls and downtown
Trains, where women don't make news
Unless they're pretty,
White,
And dead.